


Up All Night

by NeverComingHome



Category: V (2009)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:41:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverComingHome/pseuds/NeverComingHome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Was asked to post these here so cheers.  All/most contain spoilers for both seasons and pairings will be in the titles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. We Must Bring Salvation Back(Erica Evans/Anna)

**Author's Note:**

> Set after the events in Up All Night Long (and there's something very wrong) which can be found on ralst.com

  
For the first time in weeks she is calm-Erica that is-in a place where she is positive Anna could never reach her, bordering on sleep and mentally receptive.

_I’ve found you_

~*~

_Where...where am I_

_Here_

_With you_

A form materializes before her, Anna dressed in a white gown with a red sash. Erica looks around, colors shifting from white to dull gray. She knows this isn’t real, apart of her sitting upright, looking out at the desert while Hobbes taps his fingers against the wheel in time to the music. But the closer Anna comes to her the more that part begins to fade, still there but not as important.

“Good evening Detective Evans, glad you could join me.”

“Where am I?”

“I am unaware, it has been months since I’ve been updated on your position.”

“You know what I mean.” Anna is now inches from her, “Is this another false memory?”

“It could be.” Anna reaches out to take her hand and Erica can feel it, feel the hairs rise on the back of her neck and the gentle stroke of Anna’s fingertips across her palm, drawing a line down the middle, “I have not yet found the means to explain this in terms you can understand. It’s not so much scientific as…spiritual.” she smiles, “Your priest would understand.”

“What have you done to him?" 

“He’s neutralized until I can determine if he will serve a future purpose.”

“And if he doesn't?“

Anna simply smiles.

Erica looks down at her leg, staring and staring until she feels a strap against her skin, the slowly building weight of the pistol. Anna grabs the detective’s chin, lifting her gaze up, the smile gone as something sharp and cold presses into the base of Erica’s throat

“The wounds both of us receive here surface only for moments, hardly worth the mental exertion of summoning a weapon.”

The blade drops and dissipates, its touch replaced by Anna’s breath, feathering over Erica’s skin, “You want to talk. About Tyler and Lisa, about Eden, the many ways in which you plan to kill me and all those closest to me.” the kiss is soft, barely there unlike Anna’s hands pushing up her shirt, “So do I.”

“Get away from me.”

“But that can wait. Our next meeting will inevitably result in one of our deaths, we should enjoy this last opportunity to be close.” A twist of her fingers and the shirt is gone, the rough fabric of Anna’s dress rubbing against bare skin as the queen anchors her fingers in Erica’s hair, bringing them mouth to mouth. Erica steps backward into nothingness and yet somehow each step back brings her closer to Anna, the visitor’s lips moving against her own, dropping kisses that deepen each time they rejoin. At some point Erica stops trying to back away and instead presses forward, feeling the fabric rip beneath her fingers and mark the soft flesh laying beneath it, again and again as they continue to fade.

They struggle like that for a moment, Anna trying to dominate, Erica refusing to be moved and digging her nails into the skin of the other’s side, dragging up and in until bloodless wounds are scattered on both their bodies and her lips ache from the crushing pressure of their kisses.

Then in a fit of something-too much exposure to Erica’s mind and emotions perhaps- Anna sighs. A breathless sound hinting at actual joy, of true pleasure. Erica wonders and then she does, pushes her away and watches the tunic drop and disappear while Anna floats on her back in mid nothing; naked with yellow eyes, sharp teeth and soft skin.

You and I…

And then their thoughts and bodies are tumbling together, Anna shifting carelessly in and out of her human and reptilian form, claws digging into Erica’s shoulder as blonde hair splinters across her stomach. Erica’s muscles, toned from battling Visitor allies in their true form, flex in an attempt to keep up with the other‘s frantic, uncontrolled movements.

Erica is positive that what fuels her arousal is the power. The power that comes from controlling the uncontrollable, reminding Anna that some small part of her is like them in the sense that she lets her wants cloud her judgments. She can see the struggle, the brief glimpses of helplessness when its Erica who has been pinned on her back and instead of tearing into her throat Anna bites into it, drawing nonexistent sustenance while fingers work between her enemies thighs.

Afterwards they lay weightlessly side by side, the marks and bruises gone, hair un-mussed as if they never touched.

Anna turns her head to the side, gaze sweeping over Erica‘s form, “It would be so simple were you to join us.”

“It’d be simpler if you left.”

Her hand is laid palm up beside her head, Anna brushes it with her own, “Leaving would mean the extinction of my people.”

“And staying would mean the enslavement and slaughter of mine.”

“We are well suited to one another, I will be…disappointed when I kill you.”

Erica laughs, “I won’t.”

Anna smiles, fading slowly as he draws herself from Erica’s consciousness.

~*~  
Erica comes to in an empty van, Hobbes in the distance with a radio pressed to his ear, trying to get a viable signal. She makes to call for him when her mind finally catches up with her body as Anna hinted at, tendrils of phantom pleasure and pain that make her shiver from head to foot. She paws at the dashboard, gripping it tightly as small bruises blossom and fade on her skin.

When Hobbes comes back to the car Erica is sitting on the hood in jeans and a tank top, staring idly at the moon while smoking a cigarette. He steps closer and sees a faint trail of hickeys winding from neck to chest,

“I don‘t want to know.” he says and she tosses the cigarette aside red tinting her cheeks as she opens her mouth to explain, “I mean it.” he tosses the keys into her lap, "I'm taking a nap."


	2. We Must bring Salvation Back(Anna/Erica)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An AU set post series
> 
> Contains: Torture, character death, blood, general violence

  
The longer she keeps her here, the higher the chance they’ll figure it out and come back for her. Erica knows that. She sits on a chair and watches Anna watch her, eyes changing from black to yellow with each thought of hunger, of revenge and of how amazing it would feel to break her bindings and tear the human in front of her limb from limb.

“Where do you keep going?” Jack asks Erica one day. “What are you hiding?”

She shoves past him. “Nothing.”

Because Anna is nothing at this point, a shell of the creature she used to be, hanging from wires pulsing with her own technology, casting a blue glow over the blood curling down her wrists and bringing out the green in her eyes when Erica steps in close.

“If they had any idea…” Anna whispers.

“They'd return for you?” Erica smiles grimly. “Would you return for you?”

“I would do anything for my people!”

“Like getting caught?” Anna glares, “Maybe I’m not as smart as you Vs but that doesn’t sound like it was part of the plan.”

“And I assume that this was part of yours.”

“No actually.” Erica circles the fallen Queen, tracing a nail over the wounds she’s inflicted over the past few weeks and listening to Anna hiss at the contact. “Not until you killed my son.”

Anna smirks, “A small price to pay for you killing all of mine.” Erica’s hands wrap around the back of her neck and a blade presses to her spine, “He cried for you at the end. The tears sweetened his blood.” it presses in deeper drawing red. Anna closes her eyes, “Do it.”

"No."

Her throat continues to throb even after Erica lets go. The door slams shut and moments later the holo flickers on, four screens showing video accounts of Fifth Column’s destruction of her people. All of them end the same way, Erica walking from the flaming ship, covered in blood and ash, the head of a V held out before her. She’s smiling.

~*~  
Lisa failed the very test which only months ago would have meant her death and now meant the beginning of acceptance into human society. Most of the Visitors hadn’t wanted to stay, even those part of fifth column. It was a long complicated process and until Earth nursed its wounds (physical and emotional) the Visitors who had just cause to stay were being kept in a heavily guarded facility, as much for their own safety as every one else’s.

“They treat us fine here though we’re kept weak with Dosage.”

Her fingers drift to the mark on her arm, fresh from a weekly visit that kept their phosphorus levels down as well as their ability to peel from their human skins.

“I’m glad.” Erica tells her flatly.

“That I’m fine or that I’m weak?”

“…How’s Ryan?”

Lisa swallows her tears. “Unresponsive.” She tries again, “I just want you to know I would have never believed mother if I’d known she would-”

“I have to go Lisa.”

“-she said she’d found someone better, someone more suited for the purpose. You have to believe me!”

Erica’s eyes close and the screen goes blank. Lisa kneels before it, fingers raking the glass as tears fall from her cheek.

  
~*~  
Hobbes rubs the back of his head, “It’s not my problem anymore what she does alright? I just take the money drop off the stuff and leave.”

“Who's it for? Who does she have down there? Is it-?”

“I. Don’t. Know.” Hobbes repeats, shoving Jack away from him and straightening his jacket, wrinkled from where the priest’s fists had held it. “It’s never the same place and the cash is left in an envelope. I don’t even see her face. ‘I don’t care what she does’, those words sound familiar?”

“I was injured, I wasn’t thinking straight she knew that!”

He rolls his eyes. “Sure, that’s why you’re coming to me for answers.”

Jacks steps in close, finger in Hobbes’ face. “Next time she calls you I better get a call too.”

He smirks. “Or what?”

He tears the other man’s jacket open, revealing a hooked scar running from the base of Hobbe’s neck downwards. “Or I’ll remind you what happened the last time you betrayed us.”

The smile is gone and soon so is he. Jack looks up and into the eyes of Christ, staring down at him from the wooden cross.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” he whispers to him, but of course there’s no reply.

~*~  
“How can you turn against her now? Right when she needs us the most!”

“Anna and the Visitors have lied. They’ve lied from the moment they came claiming they were of peace.”

“I don’t believe that.” He backed away towards the door. “She said she loved me like I was her son.”

“She kills her sons!” Erica burst out, unable to keep it in and wishing immediately she hadn’t said it, hadn’t put the horror in his eyes.“Tyler-”

“You’re the one who's lying. I’m going back to the ship.”

Erica reached for him her words muddling together, begging him not to leave to stay and that she’d prove Anna‘s guilt. He hadn’t listened though and before she realized it she was shaking him and her voice was louder than it was a minute ago as she cried for him to be quiet be quiet  **be quiet**  for chrissakes.

“I am your mother. I AM. Not Anna. You are my son and I don’t care if I have to handcuff you and drag you to the safe bay but you will go because you. Are. My. Son. And I will not see you hurt. Do you understand? Do you!”

His lips parted as things suddenly fell into place."You’re her. Oh my god you’re enemy X from Fifth Column.”

She thought about lying to him, “…Yes. I am.”

“I’m out of here.”

“Sweetie just come to the safe bay, I’ll prove to you that I’m right.”

But he tore out of her grip, stomping to the door and yelling that he didn’t want to see more doctored videos, forged documents and evidence of his mother killing innocent people. So she’d chased him, chased him outside to the car waiting for him filled with other witless humans on their way to the ship. She’d ran after him and just as he’d stopped in his tracks, one of her pleas finally reaching him, it was Lisa who had opened the door and ushered him inside.

“He’s safe.” She said quickly to Erica. “Mother has chosen another. He’s safe.”

~*~  
But he wasn’t.

~*~  
Anna’s jaw aches. Erica had injected Dosage straight into her neck this time, pressing down on the plunger slowly as twice the amount needed flooded her veins, made her head spin and her true form itch with disuse.

“How long do you intend to keep me?” 

“Until I’m satisfied.”

“Satisfied with what?”

Erica flicks on the holo.

My queen

“Satisfied with what?” she repeats

Help us

“Evans.”

It BURNS

“Can you hear them?” Erica asks. “In your thoughts, hear them begging for you to save them? Where were you then,” she pauses the image of a thousand V soldiers, holding their throats as lethal amounts of Dosage gas came tumbling through the vents, suffocating them, “when they died?”

“I’ve already said.”

Erica continues the video.“Tell me again.”

“I was speaking with Tyler.”

She takes out the knife again, TE etched into the handle haltingly, a power ranger on the other side.“What was the last thing you said to him?”

Anna looks her in the eye. “ ‘This won’t hurt a bit’.”

The knife plunges in and up, drawing Erica close, the human’s forehead pressed against her own. Anna prays that this time she’ll end it. Not revive her with the supposedly nonexistent cure to Dosage and have to spend the entire night feeling her wounds stitch close only to be re-broken. She asks again for Erica to end it and again Erica smiles and tells her no.

~*~  
Hobbes crosses his arms, thinks about it. “Fifteen hundred.”

“Fifteen hundred? To make a key?”

“That’s a friend price. Once you see what it goes to, you’ll wonder why I didn’t ask for more.” Jack returns with the money, waiting for Hobbes to count it then snatching the case from him, “Nice doing business with you.”

“Go to hell.”

He laughs. “That’s the plan. See you around Father.”

Jack opens the case and finds two keys and a note. On one side is an address, on the other the words ‘Give my regards to the queen’ followed by a winking smiley face. Jack memorizes the address then rips the note into pieces.

~*~  
Last time it was electricity. The time before that whips. When Erica enters Anna sees nothing in her hands and contemplates what wondrous torture she has in store for her now.

“They’re coming for you.” She tells her instead.

“Who?”

“Them. They’ll gas you out with Dosage and film it for the archives.”

Anna’s eyes close. “Peace at long last.”

Erica preps the needle, sinks it into Anna’s arm but the former queen doesn’t even feel it. Soon it will all be over. She winces on instinct when Erica’s fingers touch her cheek, taking her a moment to realize she isn’t about to strike, but rather is stroking the skin of it in contemplation.

“I found it.” 

Anna doesn’t have to ask what. “I’m sorry.”

“You…you.”

“Erica,” the detective is close enough to warrant it, Anna strains against the wires and touches her forehead, drawing her gaze from the floor, “he asked me to protect you.”

“You lied to me.”

“I told you what you needed to hear. I am responsible whether it was by my hands or-”

Erica kisses her. There is no pain, no biting or scratching, simply lips against lips, shallow breathes passed between them and the very tips of Erica’s fingers on Anna’s jaw.

“Good bye, Anna.”

When they come for her she is smiling.

~*~  
“You promise she'll be okay?”

“I promise.” Tyler sniffed, wiped at his eyes and buckled himself in, watching her approach with the gun-like device, “The pod is programmed to return to Earth in three days. By then the conflict will be resolved.”

He chewed on his lower lip. “And I’ll be unconscious the entire time?”

“Yes.” She peeled back his shirt collar, “This won’t hurt a bit.”

He smiled. “I knew you’d changed.”

She pulled the trigger and he slumped forward, his chest rising and falling with sleep. She was about to send the pod into space when a tail wrapped around her middle, tossing her backwards.

Marcus.

“So it was the truth.”

Then he’d dragged Tyler from the straps, jaw dropping and tearing his canines into the youth’s neck before tossing him aside like a rag. Anna came at him, murder in the swiftness of her movement but stalled by alarms and a mechanical voice bleating over the intercom system.

**Warning. Final breach. All sentient beings evacuate. Warning. Final breach. All sentient beings evacuate.**

Marcus secured himself into the emptied pod and Anna, knowing it futile to override the command while the ship was evacuating, went to Tyler. He was still passed out and she pressed her hand to the wound in an attempt to stay the bleeding, leaning down to check how quickly his heart beat.

“Mother.”

Lisa stared in shock while the room filled with armored humans, cans of Dosage at the ready. The queen stood, red staining her grey skirt, Tyler’s head rolling to the side in time to be seen by Erica who had elbowed her way to the front.

She looked at him. At Anna.

“No.”

But there wasn't time to explain. No chance. Anna ripped her way through the crowd, holding her breath to the gas and never once looking back.

  
~*~  
Erica is curled up on the couch, ignoring the seven unanswered messages from Jack and single awkward one from Hobbes telling her to buck up or give up playing in the background to watch the news coverage on Anna's execution. They’re doing another recap on the rise and fall of the Visitors, her own picture continuing to pop up. The phone starts to ring and she continues to disregard it. She picks up her cup of tea, taking a sip while the station cuts to another commercial. They're stalling, why are they stalling unless-

“Evans.”

The mug skids across the coffee table

“Perhaps you should have killed me when you had the chance, I fear your colleagues have failed.”

She searches for the cordless phone on hands and knees, overturning folders and the ottoman

“In your attempt to make me regret being a V you helped me regain my pride in being one, for that I should thank you.”

She finds it beneath the couch, clutches it to her ear, “Anna?”

“I look forward to seeing you again. The fight has just begun.”

~*~  
Anna hangs up, looking down at Earth and contemplating her return.


	3. It's a Battlefield(Erica Evans/Sarita Malik)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contains: Direct spoilers for 2.3 (Laid Bare) and character death

 

Ryan spotted her exiting the precinct building, phone pressed to her ear, the ghost of a smile on her lips. He could guess who was causing it.

“Malik.” He said as soon as she was close enough, arms crossed as he stood in front of the car. She looked at him expectantly and he pulled up his sleeve, a gash he’d yet to mend revealing green scales, “We need to talk.”

She pressed a button on her key. “Get in.” She tossed her jacket in the back, steering with one hand and looking straight ahead when she spoke. “I’ve already touched base with Marcus.”

“I’m not here on orders.”

“Then what?”

“Erica Evans." He tosses a photo on the dashboard. "I saw you two last night.”

“It’s none of your concern.”

“It is my sole concern. How long?”

She shrugged. “A couple weeks. I thought it would give me an edge.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Well then I guess this is a waste of time for both of us isn’t it?” She snapped, turning down a side street and parking down the street from the bar that Ryan remembered Erica warning the others away from, claiming that it was crawling with cops and agents, the same bar he'd taken the photo of the two agents.

“Whatever you’re starting to feel for her goes against your directive as her partner. Put an end to it or-”

“What?” She finally faced him. “I’ll end up like you?”

~*~

_I’m nothing like him_ , she thought as she stumbled into Erica‘s house, undoing her partner’s belt and laughing breathlessly against the blonde’s mouth as the kick that she’d sent hadn’t even budged the door. Erica fixed the problem by backing Sarita against it, turning the lock before devoting her hands to other activities.

It wasn’t love. It was convenient. No strings attached, a reason to be the first person the lead detective on the resistance came to with information; so late at night when the day had been especially brutal, Sarita could let herself forget that it was all a manipulative tactic, turning her mouth into the callused fingers on her cheek and letting green slip into her eyes in the safety of the dark.

But it wasn’t love.

~*~  
“New lead?” Erica asked when she opens her eyes to Sarita hanging up her phone and putting on the pants she took it out of.

“No.”

“So stay a while.” She watched the other woman put on her jacket, sitting up in bed. “How important could it be?”

“I guess that means Tyler won’t be here in the morning.”

“Did you want him to be?”

She could feel Erica watching her face closely in the moonlight and answered carefully, “Not particularly, no, I was just…pointing it out.”

“Come here.”

She did, the lapels of her wrinkled dress shirt being used to tug her down, short nails finding their way into her hair as Erica stole one last kiss.

“There’s some things I need to take care of today, call me if anything comes up.”

“And you’ll do the same?”

For a moment Erica almost looked hesitant, “Yes.”

~*~  
She hung limply from the chains.

“None of the evidence she’d gained so far had been used against us.”

“You should have came to me first.”

“She was falling for you, Evans, and you were treating her like a one night stand.”

“It wasn’t your call to make.”

“No,” he agreed, “it wasn’t. But I wanted to save her the pain.”

Erica continued to stare at Sarita’s body. “Pain of what?”

“Of looking into the eyes of someone you love and knowing they only see a monster.”

She waited until the door closed after him before daring to shed a tear.


	4. Tyler-Sitting(gen)

 

Hobbes tells him to be thankful it’s not him babysitting and tightens the knots so they dig into his wrists and ankles, nodding to Sidney as he leaves to catch up with the others.

  
“So…” the biologist leans back in his chair, “you’re Erica’s son, huh?”

Tyler doesn’t speak, just stares down at his shoes and tries not to think of the reason he’s here and not being rounded up and interrogated like the others.

“You don’t want to talk to me, I get it.” Sidney shrugs turning back to the gutted laptops on the lab table, “I wouldn’t want to talk to me either if I was you.” Holding up a charred bit of hard drive he frowns, reaching for the keyboard of an intact computer and typing something in. “For the record? You’re exactly like I pictured.”

“Like I care," he finally spat, unable to resist.

“Well your mom may be badass in a totally inappropriately hot way, but word on the street is you’re here over a girl.”

“Not just a girl.” Sidney laughs, mutters something unintelligible. “She’s Anna’s daughter.”

“Wait a second,” he drops the keyboard back on the table, “you mean that chick who turned you in is one of them?” Tyler rolls his eyes for an answer. “Man all the hot ones  **are**  aliens. Not that it matters ‘cause she’s underage.” He tilts his head to the side. “Unless it’s like dog years in which case she’d be in her hundreds which might make it okay ethically speaking. Biologically it’d be fine either way, but I think once you hit the hundred mark you’re past walker robbing…even if physically it looks like cradle robbing. Not to mention-”

~*~  
“Jesus,” Hobbes chuckles, turning off the audio feed to the lab, “and here I was thinking we let him off easy.”


	5. Hush(gen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack Landry centric
> 
> Contains: Direct spoilers for 1.4 (Unholy Alliance)

 

  
Sometimes she can’t even stand to look at him. It isn’t fair, but it’s the truth. Of all of them Anna knew which would take it the hardest, would be the domino that sent the rest falling.

He reads the Bible more. He remembers when it used to cause him frustration, relief, compassion and a collage of other emotions, overlapping and slipping into one another as the text filled his eyes and the words his heart. It used to be poetic like that. Now it just fills the time between eating and sleeping, between roaming the streets and trying not to think of the woman who sent him into the lion’s den.

“Souls are overrated.” Hobbes jokes and would feel bad about it if it was possible for the ex-priest to be offended. Nothing effects him now and Hobbes wouldn’t admit it with a gun at his head, but he sort of misses the holier-than-thou glares, the long speeches about decency and how the other man lacked it, but still telling him to be careful before he left on a hit. Hobbes is a creature of change, he gets used to it even if Erica still can’t.

~*~  
“So?” she asks the mercenary and can tell he’s rolling his eyes by the tone of his voice.

“It’s like tailing a psychotic robot. He goes to the same places over and over, pissing off the same people.”

“Has anyone been hurt?”

He watches him bump into someone and keep walking. The man says something, but Jack doesn‘t stop. Hobbes tenses at the wheel as the man starts to shout, taking a step forward before apparently deciding against it. He relaxes back in his seat.

“Not yet.”

When it finally happens she’s there to see it. A routine patrol, she’d managed to turn the accusations against her into a story about trying to destroy Fifth Column from the inside out. It had worked, but suspicions were still high and she’d been relegated to rookie work until the investigation was complete.

Turning the corner she sees two men in front of a bar, one is yelling about a tab and the other staring at him blankly, arms at his side until the one yelling shoves him. A punch flies then another and another until Erica couldn’t hear her own voice over the sound of fists crushing bone.

“Damn it, Jack.” She manages to pull him off, revealing the other man to be a bartender, his white smock bearing the logo of the bar.

“He attacked me!” He roars.“Orders drinks and sandwiches all month long reading that book, I finally tell him to pay up and he just walks out on me, right in the middle of my sentence.”

“Calm down.” Erica orders, turning to the bartender. “Go back inside I’ll handle this.”

“You‘re dead buddy.” He spits, but reluctantly does as he’s told, wiping blood off his face and stumbling back into the bar. Erica glares at Jack.

“What were you thinking?” she asks rhetorically, pulling him aside, “Is this what it’s come to?”

He looks away. “You don’t understand.”

“No, I don’t, but I can’t try if you won’t work with us.”

“Work with you?” His teeth clench. “I lost my soul and I can’t even bring myself to miss it. You have no idea what I’m going through. At least the Vs have Anna.”

“Don’t you dare.” 

“At least they’re given bliss, I have nothing. I can’t even summon the will to end it.”

“Sidney is working overtime trying to piece together their experiments. We can help you.”

“No one can help me.”

He turns his back on her, leaving her frozen in place.

  
~*~  
Thomas doesn't seem surprised to see him, pointing him towards the open door and watching him enter the office with a look of smug satisfaction. 

"Jack." Anna smiles, her hand on his neck, "Welcome home."

 


	6. The Hardest Part (Erica Evans/Lisa)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contains: Vague spoilers for Mother's Day

  
Lisa taking over is inevitable. Anna succumbs to the least rewarding of human emotions. Pride, and in the end it causes her fall. Thomas is furious.

“You may have thought your mother heartless, but she thought only of you, us, and our prolonged existence.”

“An existence relying on the extinction of others isn’t an existence I want.” Lisa snaps and his mouth closes. “If we are the superior species Mother believed us to be we will find another way.”

“But that way no longer lies here.”

Grudgingly she must admit it is the truth. A week after Lisa takes over Joshua discovers leads on a neighboring galaxy whose planets he assures her are worthwhile in pursuing, its conditions and a battery of other factors ensuring their race will not die out.

“Will you come back?” Erica asks and it’s the simplest question Lisa has ever not known how to answer.

“As queen I’d need a good reason to leave my people.”

“And I’m not?” Lisa’s breath catches and Erica chuckles ruefully, “I’m kidding...I think. You-you should go before I’m sure.”

“Why?”

Erica kisses her, with a sad smile on her lips with all the quiet intensity that hadn't been there with Tyler. When it was more about the fight than it was about them being together. Lisa overlaps Erica’s hands with her own, keeping their faces close.

“I’d thought I’d felt this already.” she whispers, raising her eyes to search Erica’s helplessly.

“What?”

“Love.”

“Oh god.” Erica pulls away, leaving the young visitor holding air before her arms drop. “Go.”

“But-”

“For the first time they have a leader worth following.” She crosses her arms, holding herself because she can’t stand the idea of Lisa not being able to anymore. “I can’t deny them that.”

The other woman lays waste to the though in an instant,  hands and mouth skittering across skin as Lisa holds her close again and tastes tears on Erica’s cheek.

“I will,” she says firmly, “I will come back.”

Erica nods, the smile returning, “I’ll be waiting.”


	7. Underneath (Erica Evans/Lisa)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set after the events of the series finale. 
> 
> Contains: General violence

  
  
She starts with her shirt, the plain blouse criss-crossed with reds that weren’t there when Erica left home. When she got into the car she'd felt the shift of air across the back of her neck and found herself beneath a visitor soldier rabid with human rage, instilled into him by Anna.

“I was weak.” Lisa whispers, dropping the shirt off the side of the bed and trailing her fingertips over the holes in Erica’s bullet proof vest.

Three of them. She’d miraculously escaped her car, but had been followed venomously, bullets flying as she raced away from her block, leading the soldier from innocent humans on their way to work or school and onto the nearest deserted street. She’d climbed up a fire escape, hung from it with one arm and kept herself steeled against the recoil so she could continue to blast away at the monster on her trail. Sensing his disadvantage he’d dove behind a garbage bin, reaching around to land three shots to Erica’s chest, flinging her from the metal railing and onto the sidewalk.

Next the tank top beneath that, now able to watch Erica’s chest rise and fall, charting the bruises that cover her bared skin.

“You survived a month of interrogation before Anna was forced to extract your memories by force. That isn’t weakness.”

“I betrayed you,” Lisa counters. “If I’d…if I’d been stronger Tyler would still be alive.”

Erica’s breath catches and she swallows the lump in her throat. “No he wouldn’t.”

She’d twisted her ankle while attempting to lose the visitor in a back alley. She lifts her hips so Lisa can remove her pants and assess that it is only a sprain, her thumb whisking over a tender spot and provoking a wince. Nearly a mile she’d been dragged along before the visitor had come upon the wrong pod, greeted not by a vengeful Anna but her escaped daughter.

  
Exposed. Bare. Erica sits up, back against the headboard.

“We asked too much of you. I was becoming as bad as them…as bad as her.”

She reaches out, but Lisa shies away, closing her eyes only to see her own face, grinning before taking the last person who meant something in Erica’s life.

“I won‘t let you forgive me.”

“Lisa-”

“No.”

She’s still weak from the trials Anna put her through and when Erica wraps a firm hand around her neck she finds herself tilting towards her, face soon cradled in Erica’s palms while still attempting to strain away.

“Don’t take this away from me. We all want to believe the people we love have changed.”

“But it wasn’t just anyone. It was Anna. If I had gone through with the plan-”

“-then you’d be like her.” Erica finishes. “You’d be like me.” Her thumbs rub the tears from the younger woman’s cheek, “Forgive yourself.”

“I can’t.”

Their faces are too close, Erica’s hand too real as it falls from one of her cheeks to Lisa’s head as her mouth tilts in the opposite direction. There’s no way to evade it and soon Lisa doesn’t want to. It’s Erica who touches their lips together, gives Lisa permission to lose herself and the young visitor taking advantage of it. She steals into Erica’s mouth with her tongue, pushes her deeper into the pillows and rids the detective of her bra without a second thought.

Their eyes lock when Lisa’s fingers enter her, Erica’s interlaced at the nape of her neck. Lisa’s movements are calculated and slow as if Erica’s release is all that matters in the world and making the surviving Evans come apart with pleasure is the only way she’ll be able to live with what she failed to do.

“Kiss me,” Erica rasps and comes as soon as their lips touch, the shudder rippling through her body and rendering Lisa breathless. She feels a brief twitch of sensation in her forehead and suddenly finds herself being pushed aside, Erica’s touch frantic rather than firm.

“Your eyes,” she whispers in explanation when Lisa is no longer touching her, “they changed.”

“I’m sorry.” Lisa draws her knees up to her chest. “It happens sometimes when we’re in a feral state.”

“You’re not like them.” she says as much to herself as Lisa.

“Underneath I am. Beneath this skin I’m as much like Mother as the visitors you fight against.” The corners of her mouth twist up ruefully, “It’s what’s on the inside that counts.”

Erica steels herself, uncrossing Lisa’s arms and bringing her slowly towards her again. Lisa’s touch is soft and patient as she allows Erica to set the pace of the kiss, the sensation returning when it deepens only for Erica to pull away, the beginnings of a smile on her face for the first time in months.

“I’ve always been the shallow type.”


	8. Bullets & Boyfriends(Sidney Miller/Tyler Evans)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contains: Unrequited/unexplored relationship

 

Sidney has a thing for dumb guys. It’s not intentional, it’s more of a sense as in “lack of common”. Like Dean who told Sidney he was majoring in Astrology.

“You mean Astronomy,” Sidney had returned/

“Nah, I don’t believe in zodiacs.”

Or worse the smart dumb ones. The intellectual type in advanced Chem courses who he discovers don’t “get” George Carlin jokes and can't tell the difference between sneakers and high top Converse. Not serious enough to be curse, but happening too frequently to be a coincidence; Sidney categorizes it as a habit and forces himself to steer clear of people he’s wildly attracted to.

Instead he dates girls since the dumb guys thing only applies to, well, dumb guys and is relieved when it works pretty well. That is until Tyler Evans shows up at his apartment one night, ranting as he brushes past the biologist and collapses onto the couch.

“Sure, come inside young Evans make yourself at home, tell me all about it.”

Tyler looks up, “What?”

“Nothing.” Sidney sighs. “Want a drink?”

“Only if it’s vodka.”

Sidney brings him a Sprite, finding a shirt on the ground and putting it on from his easy chair. Lisa broke up with him, something about devoting her time to some guy on the ship who had amnesia and not wanting to put Tyler in danger. The kid doesn’t know anything and there’s a ton of reasons why Sidney should send him home to Erica (number one being that she’s Tyler’s very protective mother and number two being that her best friends are Smith&Wesson, the end all of deadly combinations), and yet…

“I know this is going sound stupid, but maybe you should forget about her."

“You’re right, that does sound stupid.”

“There’s an entire ship full of them, that you know of,” he continues, “if this one is hung up on some other guy  then what’s the point?”

“The point is I’m in love with her,” he laughs breathlessly in disbelief, “you don’t throw away people whenever there’s a problem. You work through it. You fight. That’s what I’m gonna do, I’m going to fight for her.”

Sidney chuckles, leaning back into his seat with a nonchalant shrug, “Oh sure, fighting to get the results you want, that totally works. No wonder everyone is such a big fan of war.”

Tyler nods then frowns and a voice in the back of Sidney’s head goes ‘oh crap’ just as he stands to sit next to the boy on the couch. His voice softens as he starts speaking, not sure of anything except the fact that Tyler’s clothes are rumpled and for all his clenched fists and growling he’s just some kid who got dumped by a girl he thought was special. And who knows, maybe she is, Sid has heard Erica talk about her bravery her willingness to help them but Tyler doesn’t know any of that. To him she’s a girl that brought excitement to an otherwise ordinary life. Sid tells him as much, bluntly in his roundabout way.

“I dated this guy, ‘save the planet’ activist dude. I would have done anything for him,” Tyler raises an eyebrow but doesn’t say anything. “When he asked me to help him pay back a logging company that was decimating this forest I went. We were supposed to throw some stones with notes taped on him ‘how do you like when what’s rightfully yours is defaced?’ stuff like that.”

“Sounds lame.”

“It was. So we’re throwing the rocks over the gate and I chucked one really hard, it crashed into a window, hit a guard. I wanted to see if the guard was okay, but my boyfriend grabbed me, kissed me then started running towards the car. I followed him.”

Tyler’s arms are crossed, staring ahead blankly and Sidney knows he’s thinking about what he did at the Church when he asks quietly,

“Were you and him together after that?”

“Nah, he broke up with me when I turned myself in. Love is great, don't get me wrong, but when it turns you into someone you don’t recognize…is it really worth it?”

Tyler doesn’t answer and after a moment, Sidney stands takes the half full glass back into the kitchen and comes out to find him standing with hands shoved deeply into his pockets. He says that it’s late, that his mom thinks he’s on the ship and would Sid mind if he crashed here.

A few minutes later and Tyler is sprawled out on the couch beneath a blanket, leg dangling off the edge and one arm beneath a Captain Planet pillow. He looks ten shades past adorable and he’s Erica’s son, a key player in Anna’s plans to take over the world and (from what he hears) kind of a brat. Oh yeah and a cool seventeen and did he mention Erica “Mama-Bear-with-a-pistol” Evan’s only child? 

“Sid.”

The biologist literally jumps at the sound of Tyler’s voice in the dark, “Uh, yeah?”

“That guy was a ball sack for dumping you.” He yawns and there’s silence.

Sidney spends the rest of the night trying to think of a way to say “I might be in love with your son” that wouldn’t require wearing Kevlar from head to foot. He wakes up at eight the next morning to the smell of eggs and the sight of Tyler in front of the stove, wondering aloud if jelly could be a substitute for cooking oil.

“Your mom, she have good aim?”

Tyler laughs at the non-sequitur, “Best in the branch, why?"

“Damn it.”

Bullet proof vest it is.


	9. Instincts (Marcus/Anna)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for someone's awesome donation to FandomAid (LJ). A request exploring Marcus's relationship with Diana and Anna.

  
It wasn’t even raining. 

Marcus had spent his entire week in “response conditioning” at Diana’s insistence. His current role in the final battle would not require him to leave the ship and yet for appearances sake she felt that were he to be stranded amongst them there were certain triggers for emotion he must know. 

Rain was one of them, symbolic for tears which most often meant sadness though there were occasions it signaled happiness. 

“One day we will understand it.” She assured him when he stopped by to give her his notes, “And on that day we shall use it against them for the advancement of both our species.” Before her were the latest evolutionary specs, their scientists attempts at combining the strongest of humanoid genes with their own, “United we will succeed where alone we’ve failed.” She moved on to the latest soldier glitches, “How is Anna?”

Marcus waited in silence,  remaining still before Diana’s desk and prompting her to look up with a raised eyebrow.

“She refuses to be skinned.”

A sigh, “What?”

“She refuses to wear human skin," he repeated.

“That’s impossible, I scheduled it myself months ago.”

“I have been trying to contact you, my queen.”

“You should’ve tried harder.”She stated briskly, “Our security has been in a state of disrepair, all visitors are required to wear skin in case of an emergency. We cannot risk our true forms being revealed prematurely not to mention she is my daughter; the message that sends to those who would question-” she stopped herself, “Anna is to be skinned today, Marcus, today.”

She pressed a button and the door opened behind him. He took his leave.

~*~  
It wasn’t as if he knew what he was feeling, as if his actions didn’t make logical sense because they did, they always did. He was born and groomed to be an advisor as everyone in their society was born and groomed to be whatever position they held. It simply never occurred to him that just because what he chose to do made sense didn’t mean there weren’t a set of actions that made more sense when dealing with Anna. Anna who felt they devoted too much time to a solution that worked for two rather than one, who forged her mother’s voice print so resources were diverted to the development of Soldiers into thoughtless killing machine rather than the ongoing fertility studies on their people.

“They are a match. We were on the brink of extinction for lack of a species similar enough to our own. The only thing standing in our way is how we can use that to our advantage. Their fate is not our problem.”

He explained again that the more they helped the humans the more they helped themselves. Complications arose when experimenting with alien genes and by curing their ails they’d eliminate possible problems for themselves. He could see in her eyes she’d heard the same speech from her mother’s senior advisors and graced him only with a withering look before continuing on with her one sided argument. Human ears were less than adept at interpreting their language, but he’d spent enough time with her to fill in the gaps. 

“I have been sent here for a reason,” he interrupted finally. “You have been forbidden to leave your chambers without human skin.”

“Forbidden?”

And there. Her voice was emotionless. Less as in something was missing from it, something he’d grown accustomed to without realizing it, but aware instantly when he no longer heard it. The absence of emotion which suggested its presence. How could he have missed it? The discovery froze him in a fit of indecision, staring blankly ahead.

“Marcus.” He focused, meeting her gaze, “Tell my mother that if I’m forbidden to leave the room without skin it’s only fitting she should bring the skin to me. I want her to turn me into the creature she so adores.”

Anna is the daughter of the queen, wanting for nothing. To disobey her would mean the stripping of his position. In four years their people would develop a means to detect human emotion in visitors, but until then all accused (all, Diana had emphasized) would be imprisoned. Anna in the lower bowels of the ship under lock and key.

He swallowed the lump in his throat, “Right away.” 

~*~  
He asked her once why she didn’t overthrow Diana in her own form if she wanted to send a message. Why she waited until she was skinned before doing it.

Anna had grinned, “I wanted our people to see a human destroying what they cherished most in the world.”

~*~  
She was brilliant, an unstoppable force that pulverized the immovable object in an ever changing path to a never wavering future.

How could he not admire that? How could he not forgive her impulses? Going against her wouldn’t bring back Diana, it wouldn’t change the minds of those who received bliss with blind obedience or change the fact that without a leader their people would die out. 

Fighting her wouldn’t make it any easier to stop loving her.

So he stayed, he stayed so that he could always be at her side, suggesting and hinting and hoping in vain she would see the sense in her mother’s choices and become the queen their people needed, the one that he needed.

~*~  
“Do you miss her?” she asks one night.

“Who?”

“Her.”

“I miss what she represented, what she promised.”

Anna’s nail trails down the middle of his chest, flicking aside the blanket, her voice playful, teasing almost, “And that was?”

“Peace.”

“I promise peace.” she whispers, making him look away from her wandering hands to her face when he asks carefully,

“Peace for whom?”

“Us.” her lips brush his, “All of us.”

He lifts his head from the pillow, kissing her without pause as he rolls her onto her back. She doesn’t object or fight it, draw attention to the pointlessness of whatever it is they’re doing together and he gets lost in it. He gets lost in the fact that maybe there is one thing that can be done without ulterior motives, without plans or purpose and it doesn’t have to make sense and for once they could just…be. And that if she’s capable of that perhaps there could be peace.

But he gets so lost in her that he never bothers to ask who she meant by ‘us’.

 


	10. Curtain Calls (Erica Evans/Jack Landry)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for someone's awesome contribution to FandomAid(LJ). 
> 
> Contains: Apocalyptic aftermath of the Visitor's victory

 

When us vs. them becomes just them Erica finally breaks, the pieces of her life feathering while Anna speaks of peace from beyond the metal bars.

“Keep it together,” Lincoln tells her, hands gripping her upper arms because he’d found the schematics to blow up the ship and isn’t ready to die just yet, “we’ll make it through.”

She’s no closer to believing him when she’s up at some god-awful hour replacing security cameras  in the sewers and sees Jack. He stops and she runs up to him, wrapping her arms so tight around him she wouldn’t be surprised if she left a mark, an imprint of her mouth against his shoulder as she breathes him in and thinks of a time when fighting meant more than a chance to watch their people turn themselves over to the woman who had taken everything.

“We’re running on pre 90s tech, they’ve hijacked nearly all our resources. How did you find me?” 

She pulls away to look at him and it’s then she notices the gray and red, the short hair and the smile that serves to distract from an expressionless gaze. It wasn’t supposed to happen at all let alone like this; with her on the brink of losing it and him without a hair out of place, reaching out to her like the past five years haven’t happened.

“Come with me.”

“They‘re turning you.”

“Not anymore,” he says but it doesn’t change the yellow of his eyes, “Anna released us and stopped the experiments. They’ve found a way to save their race without taking over ours.”

“Lies.”

“I thought so too once,” he steps forward and Erica thinks of the holstered gun and the knife in her boot, “Utopia is right above us.”

She shakes her head, “What if-?”

“I’m right?” he cuts in, “and you’re wasting away down here when there’s a better life to be had?  The Vs have changed since the breakthrough.” He lifts his hand and she lets him touch her cheek, pull her close to rest his forehead against her own, “You told me to trust you once.” 

Then he smiles that smile she remembers from spars and silent moments sifting through evidence and manages to look past the red V on his collar and see Jack. Jack who ran down mentors and friends and helped blow up buildings after vowing to never kill a man in battle again, the Jack who held her in his arms when they lowered her son’s casket into the ground.

“Okay.”

~*~  
It’s not quite Utopia, but it’s close enough. He’s in the outreach program, finding and creating ties with those still resisting the visitors, the police force is on its way out and patrolling the streets with rubber bullets in the chamber doesn’t give her the same thrill it did, but it’s worth it when she walks into the kitchen to find Jack in front of a gutted stove.

“I know how to cook.” he tells her solemnly, turning around when he hears her laugh. “I’ve  put together over fifty kitchens for Habitat for Humanity. Jack Landry doesn’t burn scrambled eggs.”

“Except that you totally did. Maintenance says there’s no problem.“ Tyler sets the coffee and donuts down, taking out Erica’s and kissing her cheek as he hands it to her. “Happy birthday mom.”

Jack mumbles about going down there himself, but doesn’t move, putting the stove back together while Erica and Tyler talk about the new university and the class Lisa is teaching. Midway through arguing with his mother about taking time off from work to earn another degree one of the kitchen walls flicker and Anna’s face appears. 

As the warmth floods her she feels Jack’s fingers interlace with her own, kissing the back of her hand as Anna’s voice fills them with tailored bliss; resurrecting images of them fighting followed directly by the day she found him packing away his collar and turning around with a diamond ring. When her face disappears, Tyler takes a sip of coffee

“And besides,  it’ll give me more time with Lisa.”

Jack shrugs, “He does have a point.”

~*~   
The scar stands out like a green half moon on his face and this time she’s the one that thinks of the knife in his boot and if she’s pressed the black dot on the bracelet all humans are now required to wear. He sees it on her wrist when she slaps him, hisses that he killed her son and reels back when he holds out a disk and changes her world again with two words:

“Did I?”

When the soldiers show up she tells them it was a false alarm.

~*~  
He’s not the same person and neither is she.  It’s the end of the world, her son has died twice and romance doesn’t factor into the equation when your husband is a priest turned alien-human hybrid science project intent on taking down the evil queen that made him convert those he now struggles to save. There’s guilt and wounds that never healed quite right the first time around that are reopened with every battle or argument about what happened the last time she trusted him.

Carly tells her softly that some things aren’t meant to be before leaving with the others to raid the training camp while Erica and Jack traipse through a blown apart apartment complex in what used to be San Francisco. She’s blasting apart a safe when she hears Jack calling out to her,  the urgency in his voice making her race through the debris, skirting past black skeletons and ash.She finds him in half a two bedroom apartment, a bonfire going in the kitchen that illuminates a Looney Toons blanket with cheese, bread and a dusty bottle of brandy. He fishes a yellow capsule from his pocket, pours a bit of water from his canteen over it, and a rose forms instantly in his palm.

“Anderson turned over a supply truck. They came back with this then left to get the rest so, well,” he laughs, shaking his head at the wreckage around them, “happy anniversary.”

And in the end she realizes that just because things shouldn't work and nearly don't, doesn't mean they can't. 


End file.
